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Great news, what about that comment about Ace Combat designs (I love any and all sleek aircraft designs!! ) I clicked on your link, but didn't get anything... Is Hasegawa branching out into other fictional aircrafts?! How about Yukikaze?

The legs are now together, again I used tube cement for strength and I used enough so that it oozed out the seems so I can sand them down later. I also used the tape to keep the pieces together and the gear doors properly aligned. Now remember to glue in the forward gear doors (the piece with the blue/red light) it required a bit of additional sanding around the edges to fit into the leg properly.

Make sure when you glue the legs together you don't miss this crutial piece (since its inclusion is only on the Super Valkyrie's Hasegawa instructions) - it was nice that the Captn' included a resin substitute for us. This allows the thighs to attach the legs at the proper bend angle at the knees. It would help that one has built a super Valkyrie before embarking on this kit (even though we are just using a regular Valkyrie fighter kit to make this).

Before gluing the leg halves together, I thought I'd be smart and mask the black portions and the feet/nozzles off first. It is possible to mask all this after you glue it together (which is what I've been doing up till now) but I think this make a bit more sense.

Now to glue the resin intakes to the thigh part. I used crazy glue for this bond, regular styrene cement wouldn't work due to the disimilar materials being bonded. Fortunately, the Captn' provided us with the "Super" parts needed to bend the legs/engines at the knees without having to purchase a Super Valkyrie to make with this Booster. He even assembled them for us, unfortunately, he missed a few injection pins holes on the inside of the intakes, which is a real pain to sand out after the intakes have already been assembled (so being the lazy sod I am, I left them)

Best way to trim off the excess resin sprue is with an exacto razor saw

The afterburners now gets a thinned down flat black wash to pick out the raised details. (You'll hardly see this unless you are looking right into the tailcone with a strong light)

I aged the gunpod the same way (yes I choose steel instead of the grey cause I thought it was cooler). This is before a black oil wash to pick out the panel lines and vents.

Here I tried the "Exhaust" colour from Alclad - I like it a lot, usually I do it with a very thin coat of flat black, but I have to clear coat seal that in, since the light dusting of black is easily scratched or pulled off with tape. But this Alclad colour adheres to the undercoat of steel much better, plus its slightly browny, bronze metallic in itself - much more convincing as burnt metal! I tried to spray where I think whe parts look best burnt, mostly around the tips and that joint - becareful not to over do it, its nice to see the differences in the metal finishes. Don't worry about the injector pins inside the cans - you'll never see them. The good thing about building a few of these Valkyries is that you learn where to cut corners

Thanks for tuning in... I take my photos with an old Nikon 990 digital, on macro mode with as small of an aperature (high F-number) as lighting permits. I try to get in tight, and this digital allows me to get within 2cm of the subject. Lots and lots of scrubbing, mostly with Comet and a toothbrush, then some detergent to get it all off during rinsing. Its very important to always scrub all resin kits, there are always release agents to help the resin "pop" off the molds that will resist paints or worst, interact with the paint coat years afterwards.

Sputtering is not indicative of paint consistency, its a pressure problem (or misaligned needle/nozzle assembly). In fact, airbrushes are happiest spray extremely thin inks, the consistency of alcohol. But one must balance the viscosity of the medium with its ability to cover. What PSI are you spraying at? For metallics (Alcad) I spray at 15psi, for Tamiya Acrylics, I spray at 20-25psi.

Here I hand brushed the rear exposed portions of the leg in flat black (the gloss is because I took the picture before the paint dried) When assembled it will help with the illusion of depth when looking from behind and seeing around the leg portion of the nozzle. I am spending time here since I plan of being able to separate the Valkyrie from the booster - I suppose you can skip some of these steps if the Valkyrie never leaves the booster since you won't be able to look up the tailpipe if its got its leg stuck in the booster.

The Alcad Steel works wonders on the gunpod! I've also got a different shade of Alcad called Jet Exhaust - it looks like burnt iron. Which I'll try later on when this coat of steel dries - I'll use it to shade the tips of the nozzles.

Ok, enough preaching (modelling is already a dying hobby, we don't want our modellers to be dying themselves!) Here's a shot of the foot/nozzles, make sure to carefully sand the sprue attachment points with a fine 600 grit paper, these Alclad metalizers are very unforgiving and any scratches and blemishes telegraph through.

OK, airbrush starting up. Safety first! I've been wanting to build a proper vented spray booth for years now, but in the meantime, I'd make do with a facemask. I've been spraying with my airbrush for years without any kind of protection, but January 16th of this year, my best friend Dan Lee died of lung cancer at the age of 35. He never smoked a day in his life and lead a very healthy lifestyle. However, we've been building models since highschool - and breathed all kinds of crap into our lungs - we were young and invincible! He was convinced that it must of been the chemicals we've been breathing in. Especially laquers which is an organic compound and highly toxic. So in lue of a proper spray booth for now, I implore you to use a proper facemask. I used to use the filterpaper mask that goes over your nose and mouth, but it didn't form a tight seal around the face. After consulting with our scenic artist, he swears by this mask from 3M which I highly recommend. There are replacable filter cartridges on either side for organic compounds filter 6000 series. So please, even if you have a spray booth, it might be worth considering this mask as well. Especially when we spray not only laquers but the Alclad metallizer stuff with real metal particles in a laquer suspension - double whammy!

Hey Brettt, I couldn't find the link?

Hmm, I've never measured, you kind of do it by eye - since each colour and finish is a little different, but 50:50 is a good minimum rule of thumb. Flat paints tend to need more thinning since it dries up in the airbrush more easily, and glossy paints needs less since its coverage isn't as good as flat paints. Additionally, you don't want to thin metallics too much or the metal particles will break up. For white paint, thin it to the consistency of skim milk, that should flow well. I'd spend the few extra dollars to get the Tamiya thinner - get the bigger bottle and it will last you a while (as long as you don't use it to clean the airbrush with). The tamiya thinner has a few flow additives in it that also allows it to thin clear colours better. Save the cheap stuff like windex and alchohol for cleaning out your brushes and airbrush (but spend the money on what touches your model - afterall, how do you put a price on all the effort and time you've put into the model)

Hi everybody, nothing new to show - just a lot of scrubing and washing the pieces with comet (nothing to see here... move along...) Hey Ido, the two tubes are just some spare polycaps I had lying around - they look good once the canopy is on (I think the PE parts are wasted if you choose to close the canopy) but styrene tubes do the same job! Hey Chad, nice of you to join in I was thinking that I'd do the white Valk, in Roy's colours of black and yellow 001 but with Hikaru's pilot name on the canopy (since at this point in the series, he's inherited Roy's plane) but I will depart from canon on the boosters. I'm not sure about the white boosters, I was thinking that I'd do it in a grey/blue like the fast packs. I was going to add a few more grey panels to the Valkyrie itself, then lighten the boosters around the Valkyrie connection points to a light grey, so it doesn't contrast as much, but start working in some darker greys and blue greys (panelled kind of like my shades of blue for the YF-21) so that they look similar beside my Super Valks with the fast packs (since I feel they are part of the same mechanism anyways) I was going to decal them similarily too. Hey Berttt, feel free to join in and post some pictures (I would like to see where you're at too) As you can see from my pictures, I have two big bubbles right at the same spot as yours where the boosters contact the avionics hump on top of the fuselage too. Additionally, I also have quite a few bubbles ruining every one of the thin delicate members around the three vertical slots that I have to fill and build up again (argh! ) And yes, I too have a gap between the two mating surfaces around the edge. I don't think any of these is a big deal yet, I intend to try my hand at filling them with some crazy glue and baking soda. This will be a first for me - so wish me luck.

Here's a shot of the two leg halves with the gear doors glued in. The doors are not correctly molded to the curvature fo the legs themselves - but its nothing that a final sanding won't cure. The forward gear doors are left off until the two halves of the legs are glued together, they still needs to be shaved down a bit for a better fit. And I can't glue the two halves together until I spray and finish the feet/afterburning cans.

The forward doors are a little bit tricker. I used to just shave back the bump behind the door to get a nice flat door that will lay in flat against the leg opening - but that often hampered the mounting of the green/red leg lights later on. So I decided to cut away the leg portion of the mounts and allow the forward doors to seat in complete with the light housing. However I still have to cut the support leg off each of these forward doors.

Then I glue the doors to the side of the leg that has a portion of the door round over - this side is more important than the otherside because its pretty crutial to get that reveal seam as smooth as possible. I add some liquid cement to the backside to fill in the gaps.

No work on the weekend (must please wife ) Here's the last for tonight... Closing the rear landing gear doors - there's no right way to do this, I've done it differently on every one of my models, but with each one, I use less and less re-inforcing. I always glue the doors together first with a styrene strip in behind for reinforcing, since the actual edge of the doors isn't enough meat for the glue to properly work with.

Hey, has anyone built this kit in the last year that can offer me tips?! Feel free to chime in...

I just couldn't resist - I had to piece something together before I could leave the table for today! its looking good so far... I still intend to make the Valkryie removeable if I can help it - well see if that's possible, but so far its seem as though the Captain has made such a perfect fit that I might not need anything - friction my just do the trick. We'll see when I get the legs together - theres a large chunk of resin I have to remove to get the legs and feet into the Boosters. Plus there's a bit of clean up on the Boosters themselves (my cast had a few bubbles in the vents and forward part of the Boosters that needs to be filled and sanded first)

I thought I'd dig out the pieces required for the legs and do some pre-assembly to see how this thing all comes together to fit with the resin Boosters. It was so nice for the captain to provide us with the forward intakes so nicely casted allready assembled without the seam. I intend to wash all the resin pieces soon (before I work with them) but I need to go out and by Comet first - its a good idea to scrub all resin pieces with a toothbrush and Comet & detergent to remove any mold release agents that always come with resin kits.